Seems like you are just really in deep with Apple. I've used Apple professionally for over a decade now, and personally for a long time before that (Mac SE was my first). When I'm on my personal laptop (windows/linux) I miss absolutely nothing about Apple. Well, that's not
quite true, I appreciate the uniformity, but the uniformity costs too much in terms of a walled garden, which is an antithesis to how I think things should be.
I think Microsoft does far more interesting research than Apple, which largely (but not completely) just buys new ideas like Cisco. An effective strategy, granted. I feel MS has a feel for where development is going better than Apple, with VS Code and the purchase of Github.
"missing something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time I can immediately think of" is just hyperbole. To me, Apple has always been the company that takes other people's ideas and polishes the hell out of them - which is amazing, but when I look at my 30+ year tech career, I don't get very excited about Apple.
I think Microsoft does far more interesting research than Apple, which largely (but not completely) just buys new ideas like Cisco. An effective strategy, granted. I feel MS has a feel for where development is going better than Apple, with VS Code and the purchase of Github.
"missing something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time I can immediately think of" is just hyperbole. To me, Apple has always been the company that takes other people's ideas and polishes the hell out of them - which is amazing, but when I look at my 30+ year tech career, I don't get very excited about Apple.